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Removing half frames after capturing

Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2008 10:07 pm
by poshrat
I am using the very good program WinDV for capturing my dv recording. My camera is a Panasonic NV-GS60.

I don't know if it the camera or WinDV ability not to drop any frames but I am finding alot of half frames in my footage when I have changed scenes or paused/stopped my recording.

With an hours footage there can be alot of these half frames which cause clicks on the sound and general blips in the scene changes.

I can edit these scenes and remove the half frames but it can be tedious after a while.

Can videostudio detect and remove these half frames for me?

Sorry if this has been covered before.

Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2008 10:55 pm
by heinz-oz
In my years of working with MiniDV footage and Panasonic camcorders exclusively, using both, MSP and VS for editing, I have never come across the problem you describe here. There must be something amiss in your set up or connections or a fault with the camera.

I have never used WinDV for capturing though. Have you tried using the VS capture module? How do you connect your camcorder to the PC, firewire?

Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2008 11:38 pm
by Ken Berry
And if that is happening with WinDV, then I too would begin to suspect a hardware problem somewhere down the line. In my years of using WinDV, its one most solid feature is not dropping any frames or anything of the sort.

The only other software thing I would try before investigating the hardware, would be to change the capture format in WinDV from DV Type 2 (which I think may be the default) to Type 1. Video Studio seems to prefer 1, though I regularly capture using Type 2 with no problems either in the capture or in editing it in VS. In fact, in just this past week, I have captured and split by scene 5 mini DV cassettes using WinDV, with not a single dropped frame from any of them...

Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2008 11:50 pm
by poshrat
Hello Heinz-Oz,

I am using firewire. I think it is more about my abrupt camera work and depending where I have the zoom in zoom out scroll positioned on VS I am seeing half or quarter clips. These correspond with my abrupt camera scene changes and sudden blips in the audio.

I think the WinDV program is not compressing the frames together on some of the scene changes. Which is why it can confidently say it doesn't drop frames.

I am also getting some single frames in kb size which are pixalated and captured as single frames. On their own in the capture folder. The icon/frame is there but they don't play on either WinDVD or my trusty infraview program.

Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 12:24 am
by poshrat
Hello Ken,

Yes I think you are right and this is mostly a hard ware problem.

My 400gb usb drive corrupted earlier this year so I reformated it and took out the main drive which I put into my tower.

Although the drive is recognised I don't think I have set it up properly with either the jumpers or in the bios. The working folder is on my secondary drive and when I put the same project onto my primary drive some of the problems are not so apparent.

So my skills as a camera man and hardware maintenance need working on.

Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 12:34 am
by sjj1805
You might be on to the cause of the problem there. It will not be a jumper setting because if that was wrong the computer would refuse to start up.
It is more likely that the former USB drive now in your tower has "bad blocks". The method to check for this depends upon the format of the hard drive.
FAT32 - use scandisk
NTFS - use chkdsk

Hopefully you have NTFS because with video related work the file sizes are huge and FAT32 cannot cope with them. The chkdsk command includes various optional switches. If the problem is as I suspect bad blocks you will need to use the R switch.

A guide is here - although it states XP it is the same for Vista.